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Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more

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Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more

#141

Post by Shooti »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #116
jmillikin wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I actually do use desktop calendaring software which > will stop working this summer. Which software is that? If it's currently working with Gmail's CalDAV support, then it ought to continue working into the future. Google is not dropping support for CalDAV. > I communicate with people via XMPP who are not on Talk. This also ought to continue working. Talk is still based on XMPP, and server federation is still work…

Wait, what is this about? Is Google changing _something_ about CAlDAV? Now I'm worried, even though you are assuring us I shouldn't be, heh. What's changing exactly?

If you want to use CalDAV instead of the Google Calendar API they're adding an additional step of applying to a whitelist: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/19gOLSlkTzHi-zub3BkMv7Ot0JML...

Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more

#142

Post by subway »

The biggest problem with moving back to XMPP now is that Google us cut us off from anyone now using Hangouts. Less than a year ago I drank the Google Kool-Aid and started using GApps instead of my personal server running Postfix/Dovecot/EJabberd. Since 87% of my XMPP contacts are on the GSuite, by going back I lose all IM connectivity with them. I almost feel like I'm being held hostage at this point. I've also invested a few grand in services, software, and hardware that ties into the GSuite, providing further disincentive to move away.

In summary: Bah.

Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more

#143

Post by tomkarlo »

ineedtosleep wrote: post #135
tomkarlo wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Setting up email servers, especially ensuring that they don't get blacklisted by other servers, is a huge pain and definitely not worth the trouble for an individual or a small team. If you're concerned about Google, there are lots of other providers out there, and whatever they're charging is probably a bargain relative to rolling your own.

Can you elaborate on the blacklisting part? I've had my mailserver for a little over a year now and never had any issues with my mail going to spam, but my uses for that mailserver only revolve around 2-3 email accounts.

Sorry, I was a little unclear - the setup is easy, it's the maintenance that's annoying. (I've run mail servers in one way or another for ~15 years. I use Google Apps for my personal email now but still maintain some servers that do about 10,000 emails a day.)

Even if you have DKM/SPF setup, someone can decide to start spoofing email from your domain to send spam, especially if your domain has been around a while and is relatively clean. Since you don't send a lot of real mail, all of a sudden 99% of the email marked as coming from your domain is spam.

It's not always even obvious that you've been blacklisted; mails may simply be significantly delayed (AOL does this, I guess so they can check for similar messages to other users), etc.

This is an issue for email providers as well, but they have people on staff paid to deal with it.

Even if you only have to deal with this once every 2-3 years, that's still generally going to be worse than simply paying someone $5 a month for a managed email service, not to mention to you have to deal with backups, etc.

Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more

#144

Post by FireBeyond »

ValentineC wrote: post #82
MatthewPhillips wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use FastMail. For one FastMail offers email for your domain, which Gmail no longer does. FastMail has archiving, great search, and a superior interface. The Gmail interface is pretty bad IMO. It's cluttered with a lot of stuff that have nothing to do with email like: 1) A black navigation bar across the top that doesn't help with email. 2) 300px wide box across the top right dedicated to a social network no one use…

> For one FastMail offers email for your domain, which Gmail no longer does. You're still able to get a free one-user Google Apps for Domains account by going through Google App Engine. [1] I've used it to get catchall email addresses for any new domains I've recently registered. [1] http://lifehacker.com/5967336/use-google-app-engine-to-get-g...

When I migrated back from Windows 8/Phone 8 to iOS, I looked at this - but this loophole, from everything I've read, has been closed for a few months now.

Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more

#145

Post by thezilch »

nsmartt wrote: post #83
thezilch wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not evil to make or ask for money to use your product; it's not evil to discontinue services, especially not with 6-24 month advanced warning; and it's not evil to literally want to be the omnipresent center of everyone's lives. How exactly is Google evil? Their resources have not stopped lesser alternatives from doing business, even with a core product (eg. search) of their's, so it's not that. DuckDuckGo i…

Google used to support openness, and now it is being less open, and therefore less "good". A step in a direction that is less "good" is a step towards "evil". It's not unreasonable to say that Google is being more evil. It's not a stretch to say that Google can't be trusted not to be evil if they've moved in a more evil (or less good) direction.

Google supports openness just fine and not statistically less than yesterday or n-days ago: https://code.google.com/hosting/search?q=label:google. Regardless, I'm dubious to believe having closed software makes one evil; just the same for discontinuing a product. Three steps forward; one step backwards; not evil, even by your ridiculous terms.

Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more

#146

Post by eatfish »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #116
jmillikin wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I actually do use desktop calendaring software which > will stop working this summer. Which software is that? If it's currently working with Gmail's CalDAV support, then it ought to continue working into the future. Google is not dropping support for CalDAV. > I communicate with people via XMPP who are not on Talk. This also ought to continue working. Talk is still based on XMPP, and server federation is still work…

Wait, what is this about? Is Google changing _something_ about CAlDAV? Now I'm worried, even though you are assuring us I shouldn't be, heh. What's changing exactly?

Google are blacklisting Microsoft. But they can't say that so they're whitelisting everyone else.

Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more

#147

Post by justin0 »

tomkarlo wrote: post #143
ineedtosleep wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on the blacklisting part? I've had my mailserver for a little over a year now and never had any issues with my mail going to spam, but my uses for that mailserver only revolve around 2-3 email accounts.

Sorry, I was a little unclear - the setup is easy, it's the maintenance that's annoying. (I've run mail servers in one way or another for ~15 years. I use Google Apps for my personal email now but still maintain some servers that do about 10,000 emails a day.) Even if you have DKM/SPF setup, someone can decide to start spoofing email from your domain to send spam, especially if your domain has been around a while and…

Managing black lists is definitely a pain in the ass. If you can do outgoing spamassassin it definitely helps. I also use MXToolbox's free plan to monitor my two outgoing mail servers for blacklist. Alternatively, you can use Nagios to monitor blacklists.

Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more

#148

Post by akurtzhs »

acabal wrote: post #59

I've been working on removing myself from the Google silo for the past few months. It's tough, and the alternatives just aren't as good or convenient as what Google offers, but I think it's an important thing to do at least on principle. I found Owncloud to be difficult to install and very buggy. For self-hosted CalDAV/CardDAV, I chose Baikal ( http://http://baikal-server.com/ ) instead of Radicale. It seemed easier…

Rackspace's hosted mail is $2/inbox/month now, and they have a minimum of 5 mailboxes.

I used their service when it was Mailtrust, and continued on after Rackspace bought them without complaint, but that was when I could buy a single mailbox.

Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more

#149

Post by lh7777 »

akurtzhs wrote: post #148
acabal wrote: post #59

I've been working on removing myself from the Google silo for the past few months. It's tough, and the alternatives just aren't as good or convenient as what Google offers, but I think it's an important thing to do at least on principle. I found Owncloud to be difficult to install and very buggy. For self-hosted CalDAV/CardDAV, I chose Baikal ( http://http://baikal-server.com/ ) instead of Radicale. It seemed easier…

Rackspace's hosted mail is $2/inbox/month now, and they have a minimum of 5 mailboxes. I used their service when it was Mailtrust, and continued on after Rackspace bought them without complaint, but that was when I could buy a single mailbox.

Me too; been with them since '04 when they were webmail.us and not a single issue.

Re: Leaving Google’s silo: Alternatives to Gmail, Talk, Calendar, and more

#150

Post by gelnior »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #80

It would be really great if somebody wrapped up all the open source material available and made an image available to AWS and other VPS users. Use the image, have email, an XMPP server, etc -- out of the box. On your own dime. I'd pay for it.

You should have a look at this: http://cozy.io/
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